North Cook News

At the March 27th council meeting, city officials from Evanston were asked to present and place some information on file about the city’s commitment to protecting reproductive healthcare rights.

 With the Supreme Court decision last year reversing, Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, the city of Evanston asked multiple departments to find ways to protect and offer support for such services to their residents, including their police department, human resources, health and human services, and 311. 

The departments came together to find new solutions and ideas for the topic, creating a Reproductive Rights webpage on the city site that has a HIPAA-protected web form people can use to submit requests for help or information. The page has lists of information and providers for residents, employees, or visitors to use and research, and contact information provided by Evanston 311

The council also filed its new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) plan for the cityscape. The city has been working on this report and plan for years now, having a consultant hired in 2021 to assess and make recommendations to the city on their current ADA levels and future plans. The consultant worked with several individuals and organizations in the city for over a year to analyze and report on all aspects of ADA compliance, recommendations, and city infrastructure. The city has not updated its ADA-compliant plan since 2012. 

"So as part of the consultants' work, we actually started with a public engagement process in which we enlisted an ADA advisory committee," said Laura Biggs, Evanston city engineer. "This is a group of people, many of whom have disabilities, in fact, multiple types of disabilities were represented as well as people in our community who actively work with the disability community. We conducted a public online survey which provided a lot of very interesting feedback, and we also then worked with our city staff to go through and identify how many programs and services the City of Evanston offers."

Evanston offers over 1,400 programs and services Biggs said.

"We cataloged those and each one was evaluated for if it met all of the requirements for accessibility," she said. "We also took a look at our parks and facilities, as well as the public right of way, and identified additional information about areas of buildings or facilities that need to be ADA compliant."

The city has since posted its new 593-page ADA Transition Plan, which will serve as its guideline for becoming ADA-compliant over the next several years. There were five short-term suggestions for the city to follow to improve its current accessibility including hiring a full-time ADA coordinator for the city, which is already funded in the annual budget. The city will also appoint ADA liaisons in each department to work with the coordinator, create an ADA advisory committee, have that committee review annual city budgets and plans for accessibility, and finally create a system to track requests or comments from residents about ADA compliance.